I think this is the beginnings of an economy based on perpetual growth and fossil fuel energy running headlong into geological energy constraints. Basically I see an undulatory downward path for the rest of my life. From here out, I think any rallies in our economic condition are going to be met with spiking commodity prices that knock us right back down.
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 11:21 am Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
I'm kind of a middle grounder although it's interesting to note that if you can get over that whole "cannibalism thing" there's really not too much to worry about. Well, besides everyone else catching on.
Joined: Jul 02, 2008 Posts: 550 Location: Canterbury, UK
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 11:25 am Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
Mr_Potato_Head wrote:
I'm kind of a middle grounder although it's interesting to note that if you can get over that whole "cannibalism thing" there's really not too much to worry about. Well, besides everyone else catching on.
You sound like an optimist to me. Most middle-grounders (have we just made up a new category of peakoilers?) think there will be some sort of collapse and population decrease, more or less controlled. In a nutshell, human wellfare will decrease.
Joined: Oct 12, 2004 Posts: 1011 Location: In the suburban sea of strangers
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:43 pm Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
Austere times are not necessarily unhappy times. If you are someone who can be happy as long as you get enough to eat and the opportunity to bathe occasionaly, you may do fine.
Knowing this I don't fear the likely hardships peak oil will bring. _________________ The battle to preserve our lifestyle has already been lost. The battle to preserve our lives is just beginning.
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:55 pm Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
The peak oil idea has been around for decades but recent momentum has been building since 1999. Most recently, it began with Campbell and LaHererre's article in Scientific American, "The End Of Cheap Oil".
Since then, there have been hundreds of articles, dozens of books, tons of commentary on it - but it just doesn't look as though the world-at-large is buying into the die-off scenario.
Stock market speculation and investment in conventional and renewable energies is extremely active and growing. I guess the Doomers always say, "We'll be proven right in the end". But that's what cultish believers always say about whatever it is they believe in. They claim to know the future when others do not.
As far as PeakOil.com is concerned, I guess it's sexier to spout the Doom line but I just keep noticing how the numbers of page viewers keeps declining. It used to average around 600; now it seems to vary between 250 and 350.
If you wup some doom ass on the subject of oil depletion, they just start spouting off about other resource depletion. If you counter those arguments, they start spouting off about population and eco-system destruction. They should be posting on OverPopulation.com instead of PeakOil.com - because their arguments always go back to overpopulation at core.
If there were suddenly a fusion energy breakthrough, the Doomers wouldn't even break stride. It would be very bad news, in their view, because it would simply allow for the maintenance modern civilization for a longer time. In their view, it's best to see a sudden cataclysmic die-off of 2/3 of the human race regardless of whether or not peak would be the cause of it.
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing the human race pruned back a bit too, even if I were one of the clippings. But is it realistic? I never had underestimated the ability of human beings to innovate; I seem to have much less contempt for science than the Doom crowd seems to have.
I'm expecting to see a big energy crunch and whopping huge response to it. We haven't seen anything yet. _________________ "May you live in interesting times"
Joined: Aug 26, 2005 Posts: 446 Location: Windy City No Longer
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:57 pm Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
NeoPeasant wrote:
Austere times are not necessarily unhappy times. If you are someone who can be happy as long as you get enough to eat and the opportunity to bathe occasionaly, you may do fine. Knowing this I don't fear the likely hardships peak oil will bring.
I assume we'll see a rash of books/media memes about how people are happier now that they're living "simpler" lives. These will be the feel good human interest stories on cable news and the slow news day show on NPR's Fresh Air. I also expect to see a mini-Baby boom as people don't have anything else to do...
You're right about happiness though. If you can realize that all the rest is just stuff you'll be fine. It's the Go-Go-Prozac-burnout-more-is-better crowd that will be unhappy. Many of them will forever bemoan what they lost. Seeing as how I see a slow slide, I figure I'll have to listen to these people for a very long time. In that sense, I wish I were more of a doomer. _________________ TANSTAAFL
Joined: Jul 02, 2008 Posts: 550 Location: Canterbury, UK
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 2:11 pm Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
benzoil wrote:
It's the Go-Go-Prozac-burnout-more-is-better crowd that will be unhappy. Many of them will forever bemoan what they lost. Seeing as how I see a slow slide, I figure I'll have to listen to these people for a very long time. In that sense, I wish I were more of a doomer.
Expect a rash of books on gardening, pedestrianism and simple living. And a go-back-to-land movement.
We don't need that mini baby boom. Perhaps there will still be state-owned TV? Maybe a couple of channels, with endless MacGyver re-runs to teach people how to repair stuff? _________________ Environmental News and Clippings:
http://www.google.co.uk/reader/shared/10279555364898696533
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 2:13 pm Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
Interfector wrote:
By that I mean, anyone who believes that the era of cheap oil is over, and that life will probably get steadily tougher for the majority of people, but doesn't think that we'll be resorting to cannibalism to survive within a decade, but that could be a potential scenario in the future if the right action isn't taken now.
Yes, me. I expect an eventual Soviet-style collapse of industrial economies if the challenge of peak oil is not constructively met (remember, that took many years and did not happen overnight), but the effect on political, social and cultural institutions will vary widely. Disenchantment and atrophy in one place, strengthening in another, all absolutely impossible to predict except in hindsight. Some countries will do far better than others, depending on present condition and what mistakes they make or avoid along the way. _________________ Volatility. When life isn't exciting enough.
Joined: Dec 04, 2006 Posts: 249 Location: End of the plateau
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 2:54 pm Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
Total economic meltdown....yes, people boiling each others heads or fighting over insects in the garden.... no, which I suppose makes me a moderate doomer _________________ Machines are what distinguish modern man from the savage.
Joined: Aug 26, 2005 Posts: 446 Location: Windy City No Longer
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 2:59 pm Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
CarlosFerreira wrote:
Maybe a couple of channels, with endless MacGyver re-runs to teach people how to repair stuff?
LOL...sure...DTTV - Duck Tape TV. I expect to have electricity for most of my lifetime (I'm in my late 30s), so it's not too far fetched that we'll have shows like that.
On the other hand, people haven't wanted to see their own lives on TV since the 50s. Incomes portrayed on TV have steadily risen since The Honeymooners. Archie Bunker in the 70s and Rosanne in the 80's were about the only shows on TV that showed working class people as the main characters. I expect to see more historical escapism (Westerns, etc.) than reality.
Edited to fix errant smiley. _________________ TANSTAAFL
Last edited by benzoil on Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:04 pm; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:01 pm Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
Doom will be middle ground soon enough. _________________ People first, then things, then dollars.
There will be enslavement, cannibalism, & zombie invasions.
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:13 pm Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
If "middle ground" is economic crash and famine but no cannibalism, then I'm an optimist. Tough times are most likely ahead, but the gears of change are already turning. You can bash Pickens and Gore all you want, but this is just the beginning of the tipping point. Just like Carlhole said above, the doomer party line is "sexy" on peakoil.com, and it's sexy to throw around graphs of oil production plummeting precipitously beginning NOW and then predict the decimation of the planet's population. I believe a plateau and slower decline is more likely. Under those circumstances, there will be tough times, but enough time to move to energy alternatives.
Frankly, I think many doomers around here believe in peak oil like a religion. You'll see threads like, "Do you think people who don't believe in peak oil are dumb?" and people calling someone who strongly disagrees with them a troll (like cube). Having left a religious cult myself, I've recognized some strikingly cult-like mental behavior around here. Pretty fascinating.
Another thing I've noticed.
Is it just me or do the extreme doomers post in one-line sentences all the time?
It's as if they're writing a news report.
As if each sentence is a "zinger" that will burn the opposing argument into the ground.
Maybe it's just me.
Or maybe it's just Monte and Cashmere.
But no, you aren't the only non-doomer around here.
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:25 pm Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
Moderate here. It`s also 6.15 a.m here in rural Japan though and the coffee isn`t ready yet so my brain hasn`t fired up either . But I don`t expect zombie hoards, however through economic force (i.e; we can`t afford to waste it so much as we can`t pay the monthly bill), I think there is a lot of room for powering down. Recessions will happen, but they have always happened and are a natural part of economics.
The main issue is not too little oil, but too many people. But the glut of people being added to the planet are not in the places where the oil is being used. However this also can be useful in the future if we can find other sea transport methods (Crops produced in Africa for example use less oil to produce than in England even when accounting for transport, mainly because African agriculture is not as oil dependent as Western agriculture). Much of the third world countries farming and agriculture industries were killed out by competition from Western subsidy backed Mc-farms (corn in Mexico for example).
Western farms will have to face a time when their subsidies are thrown out and they can`t compete in the face of higher oil as opposed to under developed countries agriculture that is labour intensive but not oil intensive.
But there are big if`s in all of this (how will climate change affect things, arable land, effects of over utilised land such as saltification on irrigated land, fertiliser issues, etc, etc). But my coffee pot isn`t ready yet so that has to wait.
The main effect that people are comimng to now is that we have a fantastic lifetsyle unlike any other generation has ever know, but we have to start going back to living like our gransparents did. The pain in that for moist people is that if we had always lived like that then there would be no issue, but we have been given this wonderful new era and seen what cheap oil can give us, and then it is fading away. "You mean Grand ma and Grand pa washed their dishes by hand, and had no clothes dryer, and had to keep chickens to eat food scraps, provide garden manure, and get eggs from,.... wow, they lived like animals".
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:45 pm Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
Typo wrote:
Frankly, I think many doomers around here believe in peak oil like a religion. You'll see threads like, "Do you think people who don't believe in peak oil are dumb?" and people calling someone who strongly disagrees with them a troll (like cube). Having left a religious cult myself, I've recognized some strikingly cult-like mental behavior around here. Pretty fascinating.
.
Was it this way with 'the religion' back in the day when this forum was in its infancy?
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:58 pm Post subject: Re: Any middle grounders here?
Well, really our forum makes no demands on the beliefs of its membership. It has no requirements to believe or not believe in peak oil. It does not specify the level of doomerism or lack thereof within the group. This forum is for anyone interested in the ramifications of crude depletion, so of course we will have all sorts of people here.
Maybe extreme views do not corollate with age, but I believe that a lot of the extreme views here comes from young people that speak before thinking. And if they do think before speaking, they do not have the practical living experience to temper their views.
Would be interested in the number of young doomers compared to older doomers here and match the age to their extremism.
Last edited by allenwrench on Wed Jul 23, 2008 5:03 pm; edited 3 times in total
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. But I don`t expect zombie hoards, however through economic force (i.e; we can`t afford to waste it so much as we can`t pay the monthly bill), I think there is a lot of room for powering down. Recessions will happen, but they have always happened and are a natural part of economics.
